While broadcasting from the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, Father Dave welcomes Vatican Observatory Director Brother Guy Consolmagno to discuss two of his latest books, “When Science Goes Wrong: The Desire and Search for Truth” and “A Jesuit’s Guide to the Stars: Exploring Wonder, Beauty, and Science.”
They first discuss where Brother Guy was during the total solar eclipse in the United States in April of 2024. “I had agreed to do a Zoom to all of the Jesuit institutions that were in the path of totality,” he says. “I show up at the retreat house, and I discover they don’t have Wi-Fi and there’s no cell phone [service]. I’m in a total panic, so I drove off to get a burger that evening, [thinking] ‘What am I going to do?’ Suddenly my phone is buzzing and [a friend] says, ‘I see that you’re in Indiana, I’m visiting my cousin who works in IT Indiana University. I thought, ‘That’s what I need.’ So we did the show from his living room.”
“[The Zoom discussed] the history of people’s understanding of eclipses and how that’s changed over time,” Brother Guy continues. “That’s really affected our ability to understand the universe and how it’s all put together. Some fun stories, just crazy things about the goofy things that scientists have believed, which incidentally is part of that book ‘When Science Goes Wrong.’”
Father Dave asks Brother Guy the meaning of the book’s title. “It really came out during the COVID pandemic,” Brother Guy responds. “People would complain because [scientists] hadn’t solved it, and sometimes the treatments don’t work; therefore [some people] don’t trust science anymore.”
“My point really goes back to that marvelous phrase that we all learned from Apollo 13: ‘Failure is not an option.’ In science, failure is not an option; it’s a requirement. We only learn by pushing. We think we know to the limits, [but progress is made by] seeing how it fails, and then taking a step back,” he continues. “That’s kind of the way it works with God too. We think we understand how God works…and suddenly it’s not going in the direction you expected.”
Brother Guy notes how faith and science have a supportive relationship with one another. “Anyone who is putting together this sense of a war is shooting themselves in the foot, either way,” he says. “The crazy thing, though, is people are looking for certainty. It’s the exact opposite of science going wrong; They want the science that’s always right.”
“In a sense, we have only ourselves to blame. How do [we] teach science? You pass the course by getting the answers in the back of the book. If you think that that’s what science is, then you’re going to be afraid to ask any questions where you don’t know the answer at the time. Likewise, we teach religion by saying, ‘These are the rules, these are the principles. It’s all in the Bible.’ You don’t have to do any thinking for yourself…It’s only when you’re willing to take risks that you make progress.”
They discuss the history of the Vatican Observatory, and how they have locations in both Castel Gandolfo, Italy, and Tuscon, Arizona. “Light pollution even got to Rome, and in the 30 years I’ve been there, I’ve seen a big change,” Brother Guy says, “Pope Benedict had this wonderful line at an Easter Saturday night homily, talking about light and dark and how that figures into the Easter liturgy. He says, ‘We human beings create our own lights that blind us to God’s light, and isn’t that a symbol of sin.’”
Brother Guy notes how he’d go farther to say, “It is a sin. Because all of the useless lights that we shine up in the air because it looks cool, it stops everyone else from seeing the universe the way it really is.”
